When to Draw People to Your Site

Advertising on search sites like Google can be a pretty cut-and-dry decision when considering how much to invest. Or is it? If it were just about getting more visits to your site then, yes, I guess it’s pretty simple. But, it’s not, and there is even more to evaluate when advertising on other sites that are not search engines.

The questions that need to be asked are:

  1. Why are people at the site you are considering advertising on?
  2. Why would they want to leave the site they are currently engaged in?
  3. When they do get to your site what’s to keep them from just clicking back?

When someone goes to Google they are there for one reason, to find somewhere else to go. This makes advertising on Google very effective because they have no desire to stay there. In effect, this answers the first two questions, but the third question is usually the one that does not even get asked, and that question could never be addressed here because it will be unique to each case.

Where it gets hard is when these questions are asked about non-search sites. For example: advertising on your local newspaper’s Web site, or Facebook, or someone’s blog. How would you answer these questions in those instances?